Model "T" with John Andress circa 1932. Anna Seal Schlosser collection, 1991.540.sch.

Roads for Early Autos

By Steve Shisler

Automobiles and rush hour traffic are so commonplace in society today that it can be easy to forget there was a time when they didn’t exist. There were no automobiles in the United States until the 1890s. Although there wasn’t really a "rush hour" in the beginning, (since there weren’t many cars on the road), early travel by car still wasn’t easy. One hundred years ago, there weren’t as many roads as there are today, and what passed for roads were often merely paths that were in very bad condition.

During the 1890s most people traveled between towns on trains, instead of using the roads, and for shorter trips they used electric trolley lines. As a result, according to automobile historian Ralph Stein, "at the edge of the cities pavements suddenly disappeared and gave way to mere scratches across the landscape. These were the roads." Cars first appeared in America in 1893 when J. Frank Duryea built the country’s first successful gasoline-powered automobile. His brother, Charles E., later built automobiles in Reading. It took awhile for cars to begin to become commonplace — by 1900 there were only about 8,000 registered vehicles in the United States. By 1905 this number had climbed to 79,000 vehicles. Traveling by car still meant dealing with unpaved roads, deep ruts, and "in wet weather, through rivers of mud." Gas stations still didn’t exist, nor did auto repair shops. Crude repairs were often made by blacksmiths or at bicycle shops. When a car broke down, the owner had to wait for a horse to tow it into town.

To deal with road conditions, Pennsylvania created the State Highway Department on April 15, 1903. At first the department gave grants to counties, townships and boroughs for the improvement and maintenance of roads. The state paid two-thirds (changed to three-fourths in 1905) of the cost of reconstruction. The county and township shared the balance. Improved roads were meant to be "a macadamized, or a telford or other stone road, or a road constructed of gravel, cinder, oyster-shells, or other good materials" and "at all seasons of the year [to] be firm, smooth and convenient for travel." Over time, as the number of vehicles increased, opinion grew that road improvement should become more centralized. As a result, on May 31, 1911, the Pennsylvania General Assembly designated an 8,835-mile network of roads that would be the State Highway Department’s responsibility to improve and maintain. Some of these roads were taken over from counties and townships. Others were purchased from private turnpike companies. Some of the roads that were still under local jurisdiction were designated state-aid highways, with Pennsylvania now paying half of construction costs. By the middle of the 1910-20 decade, Pennsylvania had about 98,000 miles of roads, although most of them were still dirt.

With improvements to existing roads, travel on main highways was becoming easier during the 1910s, with a top speed limit of 25 MPH. During this time most road construction consisted of improvements such as widening roads, laying of hard surfaces (increasingly concrete or asphalt), and occasionally relocating short stretches of road to get rid of especially sharp curves or steep grades. During this decade, repair garages and gas stations were becoming more numerous. The world’s first "drive-in" gas station appeared in Pittsburgh in 1913. Also during this decade, the number of registered vehicles in the United States reached the 2-1/2 million mark.

Progress continued during the 1920s, with most emphasis still focused on improving the main roads. The first official Pennsylvania road map appeared in 1925. It indicated that most of the main roads were paved, as were the secondary roads in the southeast corner of the state. During this time America was becoming the motorized nation we know today, and travel by train and trolley were starting to decline. City streets were beginning to have serious problems with traffic and congestion. Families clogged two-lane roads as they returned to the city from weekend drives to the country. By 1929 the maximum speed limit on open highways had increased to 40 MPH, and 20 MPH in town. Roadside restaurants and gas stations were increasing in number.

While later decades of the 20th century saw further road construction and maintenance, and a continued increase in the number of vehicles on the road, the greatest period of change appears to have been from the 1890s to the 1920s. It was during that time that the United States went from a nation with a system of bad roads and no cars, to a motorized nation that was already showing some of the characteristics of modern-day society that are so commonplace today that they are taken for granted.

Sources:

Historic Pennsylvania Leaflet No. 34 — Pennsylvania’s Roads in the Twentieth Century. Published by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, 1972. Text by George R. Beyer; edited by Donald H. Kent and William A. Hunter.